Wednesday, April 4, 2018

For the unfamiliar, a "reveal" in screenwriting parlance is the placement of key, revelatory information in a story. Most times, the last reveal is the most important revelation of all.

FADE IN:

EXT. STREETS

He looks round for final reassurance from them
but they have gone. He can just see their figures disappearing in the distance.
BRIAN makes for the wall.

When he reaches the wall he starts writing on
it in pathetically small letters.

We SEE it reads "Romanes Eunt Domus",
As he finishes writing a CENTURION comes round the corner and catches him at
it. A couple of SOLDIERS are with him but stay in the background throughout the
scene.

ROMAN

What's this then! "Romanes

Eunt Domus" People called

Romanes, they went, House in

the
nominative.

BRIAN

(defiantly)

It
says "Romans go home."

ROMAN

No
it doesn't. What's La-

tin
for Roman?

(slaps him)

Come on ... come on ...

BRIAN

Romanus!

ROMAN

Goes like?

BRIAN

Er
... annus.

ROMAN

Vocative plural of annus is

...
is ...

(tweaking hair)

BRIAN

Anni.

ROMAN

Romani ...

(crossing out Es and

substituting I, slaps

Brian)

Now
what's this "eunt"?

BRIAN

Go
...

(he is shaken)

...
Er ...

ROMAN

Conjugate the verb to go.

BRIAN

Ire
... eo is it ... imus, it is

Eunt ...

ROMAN

So
eunt is ...

BRIAN

Third person plural pre-

sent indicative. They go.

ROMAN

And
you are ordering ...

so
you must use ...

BRIAN

The
imperative!!

ROMAN

Which is ... is ...

BRIAN

Aaah ... i ...

ROMAN

How
many Romans?

BRIAN

Plural! Plural! Ite!!

Ite!!

ROMAN

Ite
...

(changes it)

Domus ... what is domus?

BRIAN

Er
...

ROMAN

Romans go home. This is

motion
towards, isn't it

boy?

BRIAN

Dative, sir.

ROMAN

Dative ...

(draws sword)

BRIAN

No,
not dative ...

ROMAN

...
What?

BRIAN

Er
... accusative ... er

...
domus, domum ... domura

...
ad domum sir.

ROMAN

Except that domus takes the

...?

(sword to throat)

BRIAN

...
Oh, the locative ... the

locative
sir!

ROMAN

Which is ...

BRIAN

Domum?

ROMAN

So
we have ... Romani, ite

domum.
Do you understand?

BRIAN

Yes
sir,

ROMAN

Now
write it out a hundred

times.

BRIAN

Yes
sir.

ROMAN

And
if it isn't done by sun-

set,
I'll cut your balls

off.

BRIAN

Yes
sir. Thank you, sir.

ROMAN

Hail Caesar!

BRIAN

Hail Caesar, sir and every-

thing.
Thank you sir.

(he starts writing it out)

FADE DOWN, as the ROMAN goes, but leaves the
SOLDIERS behind to enforce the punishment.

From LIFE OF BRIAN, 10-9-1978 draft, by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones,
and Michael Palin.

When they were setting up the production of LIFE OF BRIAN, and Barry
Spikings of EMI (headed up by Lord Bernard Delfont) approached Eric Idle:

…and he kept saying to me,
“Show me the script, show me the script.” And I said, “We haven’t finished it
yet”, but I’d egg him along and say, “No, it’s great.” He read it at home and
that’s when we got the money…” Then Delfont got cold feet, they all got cold
feet, and pulled out of it when we’d already started to spend money on the
production, and so we sued them.

Michael Palin: We were told
that the head of EMI [Delfont] had had a look at the script and he’d never been
shown the script before. He took exception to it and said, “We can’t possibly
do this.” It was a devastating blow, people were out there in Tunisia, money
had been committed, and they were just going to pull the plug. What was going
to happen to all the people out there, what was going to happen to our set?
That’s when Eric talked to [former Beatle] George Harrison, whom he’d got to
know out in L.A. George was a huge Python fan, and he got it together very
quickly.

Terry Jones: We got wind that
EMI had suddenly pulled out and I think by this stage we’d spent about £50,000. Then again, it was a court case.
Fortunately somebody passed us some internal memos from EMI which had been sent
round, EMI saying “We’re lucky enough to have the new Python movie” and all
this kind of stuff. So they didn’t really have a leg to stand on, because they
were trying to say no, they’d never said they were going to do it. So they
settled and paid us the £50,000.

John Cleese: I heard that
Delfont was worried because one of his brothers had financed JESUS OF NAZARETH,
and had got a lot of prestige out of it, and he suddenly thought he would be
compared very unfavorably with his brother for producing a parody of it. So he
withdrew and paid us compensation and there was a secrecy clause, which we
Pythons, naughty little things that we were, always pointed out with great
delight, because there wasn’t a secrecy clause about the secrecy clause.

The Pythons wrestled with the idea of a
Biblical story, and the idea that there was Messiah fever in Judea at the time
of Christ. That led them to the notion of, as Michael Palin tells it, “…this
character who wasn’t Jesus, but led an almost parallel life, was almost his
next door neighbor.” “…we made the leap to doing it obliquely by inventing the
guy who was born in the stable next door at the same time. In a strange way we
were being very cautious about not being blasphemous by being totally blasphemous
about another guy. My mother, an avid church-goer, saw it, but she didn’t have
a problem because it wasn’t about Jesus.”---Terry Gilliam. “The humour lay in
somebody preaching and talking about peace and love, and then in people who
spend the next 2,000 years killing and torturing each other…”---Terry Jones.
“What is absurd is not the teachings of the founders of religion. It’s what
followers subsequently make of it.”---John Cleese. And so, once again, genius
reigned. #

FADE OUT

Quote of the Post:

So he withdrew and paid us
compensation and there was a secrecy clause, which we Pythons, naughty little
things that we were, always pointed out with great delight, because there
wasn’t a secrecy clause about the
secrecy clause.

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About Me

I am a writer with four published novels, others on the way, a nonfiction book, several screenplays written and in development. During and after college, I worked as a theater projectionist and manager, in public relations, and as a literary agent selling to publishers and producers. Two heads are better than one, so I keep a human skull on my desk for inspiration (and a second opinion--FWIW, he's dead-on). I currently work as a computer network administrator in government. I'm married and the father of two daughters.
“I’m a computer professional: I don’t lie, I manage information.”
Get in touch: LateralTao ( followed by the encircled "a" symbol, followed by the 5-letter name for the Google mail client, and then the period symbol followed by the usual 3-letter start to "communication") Now THAT oughta confuse the spambots out there.